Category Archives: Trust Fund

Another thread deleted by the fine folks moderating the local AM station’s forums. Sometimes I wonder what the point of maintaining a forum there is.

Luckily I archive the major posts that I contribute. Like this one:

There is no ‘investment’ when it comes to government trust funds. T-bills or other gov’t instruments amount to taking the money out of one pocket and putting it in another. It still gets spent like any other money. There is no interest earned on money kept in SS accounts, anyway. Study your annual report from SS if you don’t believe me.

[That trust fund for the Iraqi oil is no different, BTW. Just money in the government coffers. Iraq will always have to come begging to the US gov’t from this point onward. That’ll make ’em happy, right? Don’t ya’ll listen to Timpone?]

The promise to pay is irrelevant, because the gov’t can just:

Print more money. They do it all the time. Create more debt, generate the t-bills that represent the debt, multiply the dollar figures on the T-bills x9 and viola, more money to dilute the money already in circulation.This is a simplified version of how inflation occurs, and why a dollar is in fact ‘worthless’ (it represents no real value) The problem is, the Fed has already diluted the purchasing power of the dollar to such an extent that further dilution of the scale required to keep SS afloat might destabilise the dollar. therefore:

Write new laws that change the SS’ ‘contract’; arranging it so that you never were entitled to the money in the first place, so you aren’t being denied anything you are due. They have done this several times already, and I daresay we haven’t seen the last of it yet. Look to see the drug benefits altered in the near future.

The only solution is to remove responsibility for retirement welfare from the gov’t altogether. I’m not certain what shape the ‘new’ retirement system should take. It’ll have to include those who are currently drawing on the system as well as those who have paid in and expect to draw in the future, or it won’t be acceptable to enough people that it stands a chance of passage. Individual contributions should be kept in accounts accessible and controlled by the individual himself. There should be an additional ‘insurance’ feature that would cover expenses beyond the contributions of the individual.

Perhaps a ‘general welfare’ type health/retirement/disability all in one account is what is needed.

All I know is that it’s past time to fix the problem. The complete crash of the American financial system (what they really mean when they talk about SS ‘failing’) isn’t far off. 30 years at most.